Phoebe

Phoebe cares for her mother who has dementia and cancer. Her mother declined quite rapidly after surgery to remove some of her cancer. Eventually Phoebe had to move in with her mother so she could provide care 24 hours a day until her mother had to be moved into palliative care. Her mother has some home care support but Phoebe isn’t always happy with the quality of care provided by the home care workers.

Needs Current Approaches used by Phoebe Alternate Suggestions  What Could Be Created?
1. Phoebe needs help supporting her mother in the bathroom. The equipment that she needs to help her mother (ex. Rubber gloves and pull-ups) are not funded and the process of acquiring funding is very time consuming. Grab bar for her mother to help lower her onto the toilet seat.

Rubber gloves for toileting (not enough given due to budget cuts after entering palliative care).

Used pull-ups but when it was not funded anymore, she was given pad briefs (difficult for one person to put on).

 

2. Phoebe needs help handling home care workers whose schedules are constantly changing and who are extremely disorganised and disrespectful. Ex: Home care wouldn’t turn the volume on the TV down when asked and were caught sleeping on the job Used own organization as a framework.

Did things herself because she didn’t feel confident in the way home care was handling things.

Tried to let a home care manager know when she wasn’t happy with a worker but they would let her know that she should just work with them.

3. Phoebe needs psychological support. Her siblings aren’t involved with help and her mother isn’t grateful for her help and mocks her and yells at her. Took on all care giving responsibilities herself and tolerated unkind treatment.

Resented the fact that she was taken for granted by her family and expected to do everything.

4. Phoebe needs an electronic template for health directives forms rather than the current form that you have to fill in by hand. This is difficult because things are constantly changing. Made own health directive form template and gave this to mother’s doctor, home care and to palliative care but doesn’t want to be constantly changing and copying this.
5. Phoebe needs help getting her mother in and out of bed. Electrical bed where head and feet could be raised.
6. Phoebe needs help getting her mother to the bathroom quickly; her mother feels anxious about soiling herself if she can’t get there soon enough. She tried using an air mattress that prevents ulcers but couldn’t wait for the mattress to deflate to get her mother to the bathroom (makes it more difficult).
7. Phoebe needs help keeping track of her mother’s medication because it is constantly changing. She used a blister pack for a while but because of the constant changes in medications this didn’t work. Phoebe had a bulletin board in her dining room to reference to make sure she was providing her mother’s medications correctly.
8. Phoebe needs to manage her mother’s constant bowel care. Although she wants to send her mother to a personal care home, it isn’t possible because they would not provide adequate attention to her toileting in the home. Phoebe kept her mother at home.
9. Phoebe needs help dealing with her mother’s anger. Her mother told her that homecare did a better job at bathing her and became aggressive and angry when Phoebe tried to bathe her.
10. Phoebe needs help to get her mother to cooperate with grooming – her mother would rather watch TV.  
11. Phoebe needs help encouraging her mother to do physical activity.  
12. Phoebe needs help controlling her mother’s spending. Her mother would lend large amounts of money to other residents of the apartment that she would not get back and would feed a man that was living in the building – using up all the food that Phoebe bought for her mother. Took away her mother’s credit card and locked up bills in a footlocker giving her mother $20 at a time.